


Aftermath

by reddawnrumble



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-29
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/984054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reddawnrumble/pseuds/reddawnrumble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>September 11, 2018. An EMP bomb destroys every electrical system in the United States. Farrel Decatur and her brother Andy strike out on a journey from Indianapolis to Boston on foot to find Farrel's boyfriend on the refuge of his family's farm. Along the way they face wild animals, the bitter elements, and the sinister strength of the New Order that takes control of their country. </p>
<p>Find the Storyboard for this novel at: http://www.pinterest.com/dreamreaper/aftermath/</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

#  One

 

            The world didn’t have the decency to end on a Monday. It picked a Tuesday instead…which happened to be my day off, and my little brother’s birthday.

            But I wasn’t thinking about apocalypses or our survival, or even endings, when I woke up that morning. I was thinking about beginnings, and I was thinking I could get used to spending the rest of my life waking up and seeing Sam Hacker’s face on the pillow next to mine.

            He was hogging the covers again, sprawled out and taking up half of the bed that was half of my loft space in the cabin. Watching him breathe, watching the skylight drip sunshine onto his pale hair, reminded me all over again that he was leaving. I hated this part, I always had…the worst downside to long-distance romance was after you had them for a little while. And I’d had Sam for a week.

            I reached over, threaded my knuckles through a tuft of his hair, and gave it a little tug. That got him moving like it always did, enough to swat my hand away and burrow into the pillow with a groan. “Five more minutes?”

            “That’s what you said fifteen minutes ago.”

            “C’mon, Farrel…”

            “You asked me to get you up at zero-six-hundred. It is now,” I triple-checked the analog watch on my wrist, squinting, “zero-six-thirty. Which means you’ve gotten—”

            “Six snooze buttons. Yeah, yeah.” He sat up, pulling at his rumpled t-shirt. “We _gotta_ break you out of that military time-telling, babe.”

            “Army brat. I bleed camo and all the bad habits my parents bring home from the job.” I jabbed a thumb into my chest, sitting up beside him. “Where’s my morning kiss?”

            He rumpled his hair, scratched his stubbled jaw and looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “And you say you want me to get _out_ of bed?”

            I rolled my eyes. Wasn’t like we’d done anything I couldn’t tell my dad about, except for sharing a bed with our clothes on. We _couldn’t_ do anything. The loft was right above Andy’s room, and the last thing I wanted to give my brother for his birthday was a permanent mental scar. “Just kiss me, damn—dang it. Ross is gonna be here soon.”

            His sigh was a little less theatrical this time. “I swear to you, someday I’m gonna have that actual, functioning vehicle that can get me from Boston to Indy without my brother-in-law carting me the last few hundred miles. Okay?”

            A college student on a minimal waiter’s income wasn’t going to be buying a sturdy car anytime soon, and we both knew it. “Okay.”

            Sam’s dry lips were just touching mine when the door sprang open, and we sprang apart like we were tied to it. “Surprise! It’s me, Andy…the guy whose _birthday_ you both forgot.”

            “Oh, please, I did not _forget_ ,” I threw my pillow at his head. “Get out.”

            He caught it. I was Dad’s little soldier all the way down in my cells, but Andy had inherited the reflexes. “Why? So you can start smooching Sam again?”

            “No, so I can grab your present without you finding my hiding spot.” I pointed to the door. “There’s chocolate chip waffles in the back of the freezer. Surprise.”

            “Aw, _yes_ ,” Andy socked the pillow back to us and took off running. Sam flipped it over, fluffed it up and gave me those big, pitiful brown eyes that got my stomach turning.

            “You just said that to get him out, yeah?”

            “I wish. But I need to spend some time with him before he goes off to school.” I hooked my hair behind my ear, kissed him quick and grabbed his present from under the floorboards at the head of my mattress. “Meet you downstairs.”

            The kitchen smelled like real home cooking when I walked in, something I hadn’t had since Mom and Dad had gotten called in to work in DC a few weeks ago. I stopped to savor, breathing in the light through a dozen six-foot windows, the breeze through the porch door and the murmur of the television the next room over. Andy was sitting on one of the barstools, watching the news raptly while his waffles cooked.

            “Why do you watch this crud instead of cartoons like everyone else your age? You know, Mom and Dad said nine-tenths of what you see on the news is a lie, anyway,” I grabbed the remote, “and they would know.”

            “Aw, _Fay_ ,” Andy complained, “they were about to talk about the shuttle launch tonight! Who’s gonna lie about _that_?”

            I hesitated. I’d almost forgotten that _Endurance_ and _Regency_ , the latest high-Tec gear NASA had cooked up, were going to launch at sunset tonight from Cape Canaveral on a mission to Mars. Andy had been spouting off about it for weeks. That just proved how much Sam’s visit had distracted me. “The launch isn’t for another twelve hours almost, Andy. You can watch it tonight at your party.” I ruffled up his sandy hair. “Go comb out your mop.”

            He scoffed and muttered, but he went. As soon as he was gone I plopped his present on the counter and started skimming through the other news stations. It was force of habit…having former-military parents who worked high up in the government, I’d had a lot of babysitters growing up. I’d always spent my mornings before school flipping through media coverage, hoping I’d catch a glimpse of their absentee faces.

            Sam’s arms around my waist startled me. His chin dropped onto my shoulder and he pulled me snug against his chest. “What’re we watchin’, babe?”

            “News. What else do we watch in this house?”

“Ah, the serialized lies spoon-fed to the _mas populi_ by a dumbass, morally defunct government. Where’d my appetite go?” The thunder of his sigh rumbled up my spine. “We should just shoot ’em all behind the storage shed and start over.”

“You know I hate when you say stuff like that.”

“Right, I forgot. You’re more of the poisoning-their-wineglass type.”

“I’m the _government-is-listening-in_ type,” I glanced at the phone resting dormant on its cradle. My parents had never been legally allowed to tell us just how far the listening ears of the government reached, but Dad had given me the impression that between phones and emails and the World Wide Web, little was left to privacy anymore.

“All right, sorry. No more war councils in the Decatur Family Kitchen. Roger.”

I chafed my knuckles against Sam’s corded forearm and nodded to the TV. “Look at this. The world just broke the eight-billion population mark. Can you believe it? Six years ago everyone was freaking out about seven billion, and about half of the latest billion are right here in the United States.”

            “It’s about to be eight-billion-one,” Sam nuzzled the back of my neck, “my sister’s due in a month.”

            I wriggled out of his arms and hopped up on the breakfast bar, tapping my heels in marching time against the cabinet doors. _Left. Right. Left-right-left-right._ “So, you and Ross are—?”

            “Gonna make the first leg to his place up in Rochester today. Should get in around six or seven, _if_ the traffic’s good.” Sam tipped his head and scrunched up his face. “I’ll stay with Ross and Jacqui for the night, grab my clunker car and head back to Boston tomorrow morning.”

            Just like that. He’d be sixteen hours away, and we’d spend the next few weeks wondering when we’d see each other again. “I wish you didn’t have to go. I know I say it every time, but it still sucks.”

            Sam spread his hands on the counter edge on both sides of my knees, leaning his forehead against my collarbone. He didn’t say anything, just breathed out long and shaky and warm against my nightshirt. I cradled his head in my hands and put my face down in his hair.

            The news anchor babbled on about the concern of overpopulation. All of our country’s medical advances in recent years had boosted the life expectancy from seventies and eighties to late nineties, even hundreds. Combine that with the Baby Boom after all of our overseas troops had been cycled back home, and we’d put every other continent to shame with our numbers. It was probably something to be proud of, somewhere in the chain of command; right now all I could think of was that there were eight billion people in the world and there was only one I didn’t want to be without. He just happened to be the one who was leaving.

            Andy came skidding back into the room right on time for the toaster to _ding_ , and Sam and I pulled apart again. Andy ignored us in favor of his breakfast—not two, but four waffles. He’d be bouncing off the walls at Raymond Park Intermediate Academy, but that was his teachers’ problem. I wasn’t about to tell him _no_ on his birthday.

            “Hey, happy birthday, Happy Feet,” Sam said. “What’re you, twenty, now? Twenty-five?”

            “That stuff was funny when I was _eight_ , Sam. You know I’m turning ten now. It’s not a joke.”

            “Oh, _apologies_ ,” Sam winced dramatically and adopted a smooth slang accent, “didn’t realize Mister _All-Grown-Up_ was too _cool_ for jokes.”

            “I like jokes, you’re just not funny.”

            “Gloves up, slick, don’t need to hit below the belt.”

            “Here,” I hopped off the counter and leaned against it as Andy slid into the barstool. “I got you something.”

            He eyed the box I shoved toward him like it might have a venomous snake inside. “It’s not lame like last year, is it?”

            “I get it, I learned my lesson. Legos stopped being cool when _I_ was a kid. Just open the box, would you?”

            Waffles forgotten, he tore into the box and pulled out the envelope mashed inside. When he lifted the flap, his face lit up in that way that always made me want to crush him in a hug. “No _way_. Cedar Point? You’re taking me to _Cedar Point_?”

            “Whoa, roller coaster park. I’m jealous,” Sam leaned back against the counter.

            “We can go this weekend when Mom and Dad are home,” I grinned.

            “Best big sister _ever_!” Andy whooped, reaching across the counter to hug me with one arm around my neck. He pushed his forehead against mine. “Seriously, Fay, _thanks_.”

            “Seriously, Andy, _you’re welcome_.”

            “I can’t believe it! The guys at school are gonna _flip out_!”

            “Hey, hey, hey, whoa,” Sam held up his hands, “don’t you want _my_ present?”

            Andy rubbed his chin dramatically, raising an eyebrow. “Depends. Think you can top _Cedar Point_?”

            “I do indeed. Because you, my friend, are about to become _the_ coolest kid _in the class_.” He whipped out a conspicuously DVD-shaped present and held it up.

“That’s for me?”

“Might be. See, there’s this kid I know of, and it’s his eighteenth birthday…it _was_ eighteen, right? Anyway, he says he wants to be some kinda dancer…ballet? Nah, interpretative…wait! I remember what it was.” He cocked his fingers like guns and pointed at Andy. “ _Exotic_.”

            “Hip hop and modern!” Andy snorted.

            “Exotic is pretty modern…agh,” Sam rubbed his arm where I socked him. “He’s got this really hot, totally _abusive_ sister…”

            “Just gimmie it!”

            “All right, already!” Sam tossed him the gift. “Think fast, Cool Hand Luke.”

“Stop with the nicknames,” Andy held it up. “So what is it?”

            “A pony. No, it’s a rocketship. Would ya just _open_ it, already?”

            Andy tore through the wrapping and held up the box with wide eyes and a wicked grin. “Are you kidding me? A hip-hop dance _video game_?”

            “Teaches you to dance just like the pros. Not that I would know anything about that, but it’s what the box says…”

            “Sam, this is too cool! _Thanks_!”

            I watched them chatting animatedly about hip-hop groups, propping my elbow on the counter and hiding my smile behind my fingers. Something in my throat got all tight and my stomach started fluttering when I watched my boys interacting without their usual banter and teasing; it was like looking into a window of how I wanted the future to be.

            It was a honking car horn that interrupted everything. Sam turned his head and met my eyes; oblivious, Andy shoveled a bite into his mouth and pushed his plate away. “Gotta get dressed. School.”

            “Say ’bye to Sam first.”

            “Yeah, see ya, Sam.” Andy hugged him quick around his waist without letting go of the game. “And…seriously, I mean it, thanks. This game is _awesome_.”

            “Better than Cedar Point? Okay, shutting up,” Sam laughed when I rolled my eyes. “’Til next time, kiddo.”

            I walked him to the door. “Give Jacqui and Trish a hug for me.”

            “Will do. So, listen, I was thinking,” Sam put his back to the door, facing me, “maybe next time we swing through I’ll bring Trish. She misses her Auntie Farrel.”

            “I think the member of _this_ family she misses is slightly shorter and more masculine…and more interested in model airplanes.”

            “Andy digs her.”

            “He’s a little young to be _digging_ anybody, and so is she.” I folded my arms and squinted through the glass pane beside the door; I could see Ross in the driveway, smoking in the driver’s seat of his brand-new Kia. It was one of the car brands my dad always hated, couldn’t say enough bad things about. But he pretty much hated any vehicle made after the seventies.

            Sam surprised me by stepping forward, grabbing the tops of my arms and kissing me so hard I didn’t have a chance to catch my breath. I stopped thinking about breathing at all. Just kissed him back, the only way my body knew how, until he let me go and pulled his fingers through my hair. “I’m thinkin’ two months, maybe three…”

            “I _wish_.”

            “Fay, it’s just for a while, all right? ’Til you can move out…or, y’know, I can.” He rubbed my arms a few times, watching my face. “All right, you know what?” He rolled his eyes up, stepping back, rooting deep in his pocket. “This is really lame, totally corny…and I was saving it for Trish. But I think she’ll forgive me since it’s goin’ to a good cause.”

            I stared at the tiny toy ring he pulled out of his pocket, still in its plastic ball. “Didn’t you get that out of the—?”

            “Prize machine at Pizza Hut. Yeah, yeah, everyone’s a critic.” Sam twisted the cap off and pulled out the ring. “It’s cheap-o plastic. Sue me. Gimmie your hand.”

            I did. Weren’t girls supposed to get all jittery and nervous at this part? I was feeling more incredulous—and pretty close to laughing. “Are you _proposing_?”

            “I am making you a _promise_ , if you’ll shut up and let me.” He slid the plastic ring onto my finger, curled my hand over into a fist and kissed my knuckles. “I promise I’m not gonna cheat on you when I get back to college, I promise I’ll wait for you as long as it takes, no matter _how long_ it takes. I promise I’ll stop trying to be a cover hog.”

            “Good luck.”

            “Shut up. I promise, next time it’s gonna be the real deal.”

            My breath hitched up. What was I supposed to say to that? We’d been doing this long-distance thing since his dad had taken a job in Boston at the beginning of senior year. Three years and a thousand miles apart, and it still wasn’t any easier every time he stepped out my door. But with Andy to take care of while my parents were working weeks on end, marrying and moving was about as likely as me getting a do-over on the disaster of senior prom: a fantastic dream.

            “I’ll hold you to it,” was what I said anyway. Typical heart-betrays-brain scenario. “I love you.”

“Yeah, I love you, too, babe.”

I kissed Sam again, and then I shoved him back-stepping out the door before I could drag the goodbye out. We both sucked at those, anyway. I waved to Ross, smiled at Sam, and shut the door. And closed my eyes and counted to fifteen, until the tears stopped burning my nose and throat.

Andy was just coming out of the hallway when I turned around, and he was dressed for success…right down to our Dad’s favorite Red Sox baseball cap, backwards on his head. “What do you think?” He spun in place, flipping out the edges of his jacket.

“Mmm, very gangster.” I pulled him against my side in a one-armed hug. “Finish your waffles, birthday boy.”

The phone rang, flashing Caller ID: Dad’s personal cell, not the standard-issue military one he’d been assigned for work. It was a mad lunging scramble, an undignified groin shot and some hair-pulling before I beat Andy to answering it. “Dad?”

“Heya, hotshot.” The sound of Dad’s gravelly voice shot me through with that familiar thrill of nervous energy. “How you doin’?”

I put my back on Andy, who’d already lost interest and was hunched over his new game, reading the back cover with a grin. “Okay, I guess? Dad? What’s going on, you’re supposed to be in the air.” Right on cue, chatter crawled down the wire and buzzed in my ear. “Are you calling me from the plane?”

“Not…not exactly.”

Despair beat in my fingertips. “Andy, go get your books,” I waited until his sneakers padded down the hall before I said anything else, keeping my voice low. “You’re not coming.” Dad’s sigh said it all. “Dad, it’s Andy’s birthday. His tenth. The big _One-Oh_. You can’t bail on him!”

“I know that. You think I don’t know that? You think your mother and I don’t want to be—?”

“Rom!” A voice crackled in the background and I heard Dad muffling the mouthpiece when he hollered back, “ _Be there in two_!”

“Where _are_ you, Dad? Where’s Mom?”

“Still at work, we’re both still at work. Listen, hotshot,” he cleared his throat, “want you to do something for me. Keep your brother home today.”

That stopped the argument dead before it started. Dad had never let us miss a day of school…even when I’d gotten pneumonia in tenth grade, he’d still sent me hacking and wheezing to class. “Sir? Can I ask _why_?”

“It’s the kid’s birthday. Let him stay home, let him watch the shuttles take off.”

I knew that tone of voice…it was the overly-casual act he pulled when something more serious was happening. It had me flashing back to the time we’d been out trail hiking and he’d fallen down a ravine and broken his leg. Same relaxed tone he’d used to reassure me when I’d hollered down the slope, asking him if he was okay. “What level are we looking at?”

Dad’s threat assessment gauge probably wasn’t military grade, but it had gotten us through some tight spots panic-free. Right now, I wasn’t liking the wavelengths of chatter on the line, the silence from him.

“A two.”

I breathed out, leaning back on the counter. “That’s all?”

He tapped his fingers on the mouthpiece. “Just a two.” _Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap._  “Can’t stay on the line, hotshot, they need me back on the floor.” _Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap._ Pause. _Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap._ “Tell your brother we said happy birthday. We’ll catch the next flight back out to Indy, cross my heart.”

“You better, sir.”

Andy skidded back into the kitchen right when I hung up. “Is he flying in?”

“Mom and Dad…got held up at work.” I hated the crestfallen look he gave me; weird schedules at work always made me the bearer of bad news. I crouched in front of him and turned the Red Sox hat around, tugging the brim down low over his eyes. “But, hey, on the upside, Dad says no school for you.”

“No… _way_!” Andy bumped the hat back up. “Sweet, I can try out that new game!” He shed his jacket and grabbed the game, and I started the coffee pot brewing. I knew how much Mom and Dad liked a strong cup of joe whenever they got off the flight from DC. Looking out through the window over the sink, out across the brittle grass baked by late-summer Indiana drought, I felt a twist in my belly I wasn’t used to feeling. Dad had put us on a level two lots of times—when there’d been a manhunt downtown for an escaped convict, when Mom had given birth to Andy in the living room. Why the hell we he keeping Andy home for this one?

Andy flopped down on the couch and watched his console booting up. “Are you gonna marry Sam?”

I almost spilled water down my front, jerking out of my thoughts. “Excuse me?”

He turned to look at me, dangling his lanky arm over the back cushions, his eyebrows raised. “Are. You going. To marry. Sam?”

I hid my left hand with the ring and its little plastic emerald beneath the edge of the counter. “Not while I still have you to raise.”

“Whatever.” Andy rolled his baby blues, looking back at the screen. “I guess I’m okay with it. Sam’s cool.”

“Glad you approve, Space Cadet.”

“Yeah, right.”

I went and knelt behind the couch, folding my arms on the back. “Seriously. I mean it. Sam may be extended family right now, but you come first.” I mussed his hair again and kissed the top of his head, but he was already ignoring me in favor of his hip-hop game.

Back to the coffee, and the kitchen that still smelled a little like Sam’s aftershave. I watched my little brother breaking out moves that weren’t half bad in front of the motion-sensor gaming console, drumming my fingers on the counter to the catchy beats that would be stuck in my head for the rest of the day. It took me a second to realize I was making the same rhythm as Dad. _Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap._ Pause. _Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap._

Five taps. _Five_.

Sheesh, I was getting paranoid.

I double-checked the locks on all the doors and windows, just in case.


	2. Two

#  Two

 

            Eleven hours and seven screaming adolescents later, I was on my fourth Aspirin and thanking God I’d been doing this, practically raising Andy, since I could remember. Being twenty-one and having a kid brother to look after wasn’t easy, but at least I wasn’t developing a twitch like Riza, older sister of Andy’s best friend Hanson.

            “I just don’t get why— _hey, watch it, you creeps, no running with scissors!_ —the government hasn’t passed a law yet to have little boys locked up ’til they get past the _breaking and biting_ stage,” Riza complained as the stream of kids dashed up the stairs. They’d given up on helping Andy build his model airplane from Aunt Marie and were using the glue bottles and crafting supplies as weapons in some kind of war game.

            “Could be worse,” I hooked my hair behind my ear and checked my phone for the hundredth time. Communication with Sam had been pretty lacking today while he did most of the driving, but having the stupid cheap ring on my finger kept making me smile—and making me miss him. “Come on, I know you’re getting _something_ out of this purgatory.”

            Tall, slender, blonde, Riza hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans and bent forward, grinning up at me. “I cart the Mini-Monster around for the week, I get car privileges to go see Dean this weekend.”

            Typical. Dean and Riza had been a summer fling blossoming into something more, and that _something_ was _complicated_ now that he was away for college in Michigan. “You’re lucky he’s only six hours away, Ree.”

            “Oh, yeah, that’s _right_ …you were on house arrest with the Boston Blondie all week.”

“Not on house arrest. I still had to go to work.”

“Please. You’ve never thought that subbing as an English teacher was _work_.” She trailed me into the kitchen, where the ice cream cake was thawing just enough to cut. “But enough of that crap. So? How _is_ the MIT stud?”

            “Studly. _Cake_!”

            “Coming!” Andy hollered from upstairs.

            “You wanna give these little demons _sugar_? What, are you nuts?”

            “Didn’t you ever have a birthday?” I swept the cake off onto the dining table.

            “Well, _yeah_. But if you recall, my parties always involved _talking_ about killing the people who pissed—sorry, _ticked_ me off, not actually doing the dirty deed like these savages.”

            The boys thundered down the stairs like a herd of elephants, winging around the banister one by one and circling around the table. I held up the knife. “Away, _away_ , ya buzzards!” Andy crowed and snapped at my arm. “Ah-ah-ah, that means you, too, birthday boy!”

            “Hey, Fay, can I turn on the TV for the shuttle launch?” That got all of the boys chattering. Ignoring Riza’s smirk, I nodded. “Far _out_ , c’mon, guys!”

            “Someday, you gotta stop giving that kid everything he wants,” Riza held up a plate so I could load it with cake.

            “I do _not_ give him everything he wants. I just,”I shrugged, “I don’t know…had a different childhood from everyone else. I want to make sure Andy has everything that maybe, _I_ didn’t.”

            “Oh. Right. All those weird father-daughter camping trips. You know you missed, like, _every_ party in high school?”

Of course I knew that. I also knew that the only formal event I’d ever gotten to attend, the disastrous prom, had made me grateful I’d missed the whole awkward social scene. “Who wants cakes?”

I knew the launch was starting because nobody came running back into the kitchen.

The living room was sunk in rapt silence while live coverage of Cape Canaveral in the late-evening twilight blared from the flat screen. Andy had his chin in his hands, his foot jiggling against the floor. This was supposed to be the last space launch for a long time—maybe for our lifetimes. It had the promise of being a real show.

“At last, some peace and quiet,” Riza deposited the plate into Hanson’s hands. “They should do missions to Mars more often.”

I leaned my weight down, spreading my hands on the back of the couch. The look of pure excitement on Andy’s face made my throat constrict and my nose twitch; it was the first time all day I hadn’t seen him watching the clock or the phone in between games, knowing Mom and Dad should’ve been there. And, God, a few years ago I could’ve convinced him that this shuttle launch on his birthday was just for him. The solemn little kid who I’d dragged on my heels half my life was all of a sudden a tough little extrovert at the top of his class. When had _that_ happened?

My phone buzzed in my back pocket, jolting me. Andy leaned his head back to glare up at me. “Is that _Sam_?”

“Mind your own business,” I knuckled the top of his head, digging out my phone.

“You’re gonna miss the launch,”

It was Dad. And he was calling my cell, the only phone in the house that Andy would never answer.

I tossed my hair over one shoulder and connected the call. “Where _are_ you?”

“Are you alone?”

“What—?”

“ _Are_ you _alone_?”

“No.”

“Go into my bedroom. Shut and lock the door.”

He might as well have been a drill sergeant, and I was the greenhorn following orders. I walked out without saying anything to anyone, went into his and Mom’s master bedroom, shut the door, locked it, put my back against it. “Dad, what’s going on?”

“Listen to me very carefully. Under my bed is my old foot locker. Open it.”

I dragged out the clunky metal box and flipped the lid up. “Okay.”

“There should be some first aid kits, dried rations, blankets, and spare ammo.” There was. Dad always kept a perfect inventory of his stock. “In my dresser, top middle drawer, the keys to the Cadillac are inside. Back of the same drawer, there’s the key to the gun safe. I want you to take every weapon in that safe and put it in the Cadillac.”

I was already unlocking the safe by the time he finished talking. “Even the compound bow?”

“Even the compound bow.” I heard him talking to someone, away from me, for a second. “Still there, Farrel?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. Now, in the drawer of my bedside table it a pocketwatch. You may have to wind it. Throw out your analog.”

I pulled out the watch and sat down hard on the bed. “Dad, what’s going on?”

“I don’t have time to explain this to you!” He snapped. “Do you have the watch?”

“Yeah…yes, sir, I have it.”

“Good. That watch stays on you at all times. Go back into my closet, you’ll find your mother’s old oak chest in the back under her dresses. There should be maps, about a dozen. Take two and put those into the footlocker.”

I obeyed by reflex, but there was something ugly slithering up inside me—something black and rotten that tasted dead between my teeth, old blood and stale dirt and metallic water. “Dad…”

“Listen to me. Farrel, you listening?”

“Yes!”

“Good. All right. I want you kids to take the Caddy, that car _specifically_. I want you to drive to Fort Ben, where we had that camping trip two years ago. Find some place away from all the hiking trails, park the car in the bushes and hunker down. Your mother and I will meet you there just as soon as we can.”

The stitch in my chest loosened. “You’re coming home?”

“We’re circling the airport right now.”

“Is Mom there? Can I talk to her?”

“I’m not finished. You wait at the Fort until Friday. If we’re not there by then—Farrel, listen, this is important. If your mother and I don’t make it to the Fort by Friday at seventeen-hundred-hours, you take your brother someplace safe. You kids get to Sammy’s, all right? His family has that pioneer farm out near Athol in Mass. You should be safe there.”

“Dad, you’re scaring the hell out of me. What’s going _on_?”

“I’m sorry, Fay. I should’ve seen it coming sooner.”

Out in the living room, the boys were starting to chant: _Ten…nine…eight…_

“Five taps,” I couldn’t pull in enough air to make it sound strong, to sound like a soldier, “you were trying to tell me—”

“None of that matters now. I want to hear you say it, hotshot…say you’re gonna protect your brother if we don’t find you.”

_Six…five…four…_

“You know I’ll protect Andy, Dad, I always do. But you’ll be there.”

            “ _If_ we’re not. I want you to go Dark, Farrel. Do whatever you have to. Keep yourself and your brother alive.”

_Two…one._

“ _Liftoff_!” Andy whooped like it was a football touchdown.

“You follow those maps up through Route 90. It’s a straight shot from Cleveland to Boston from there. Whatever you do, don’t head south…too many woods and too far into the Adirondacks, and you’re looking at people who know the terrain better than you. You’ve lived in the hills your whole life, Fay. You can do this.”

“Sir. Yes, sir.”

“Find Sam. Look after your brother. That’s all that matters after today, Farrel. You understand me? Family is the only thing that matters.”

“Dad, just _tell me_ what it _is_!”

“The—”

Static. And then, nothing.

The lights clicked off. From the living room, I heard Andy moan, “Aw, _man_ , the cable’s out!”

I stood starting at the phone in my hand, one arm curved around my middle. Nausea mushroomed up the back of my throat. _Go Dark_. Dad had never told me to go Dark before—he’d belted my backside the few times I’d even let my training out during P.E., or to defend myself against a bully in school. It wasn’t a fair playing field when some untrained hack pushed me against a locker and I could hamstring him and paralyze his vocal chords in two seconds flat.  

I was dangerous when I was Dark.

Andy banged his fist on the door, and I jumped. “Sis, the power’s out!”

I kicked the footlocker shut and bundled the guns up in the blanket, hefting them off the bed. “Grab your jacket, Andy. We’re going camping.”


End file.
